The Wonder of Simplicity

Since the emergence of Google, it has become an extremely easy task to get our hands on a workout program. The issue though, is which one to trust? Probably because we are in the age of information overload, and there are simply too many options out there, people seem to have an illusion that the more the better.

When choosing a program, most people are in favour of programs with the most complexities. The more phases the program has, the more exercises it includes, and the more sets and reps variations it uses, the better the program is. Is this really true? Does a program have to confuse the hell out of a person to be effective? Does a person really need a program that requires a track sheet or else he would otherwise not remember what he has to do on a particular day?

Faster Progression

The fact is, for a majority of gym goers, simple programs work better for us. Complex split routines do have their values, but those are for advance individuals. Simple total body routines allow a faster progression rate for beginner and even some intermediate lifters.

Experienced lifters require more stimuli for any particular part of their bodies to trigger growth since their bodies are already used to hitting weights regularly, and our bodies would not change unless they have a need to adapt. Thus, they have to increase the volume of workouts for each particular body part. This is the main reason why they need to use split routines, as one workout session would not be long enough for them to work enough volume for all body parts. This is not the case for beginners and even some intermediate lifters, they have enough time to get sufficient stimuli for their entire body in a single session as their bodies require less stimuli to trigger growth than experienced lifters.

Recovery

As I have mentioned above, an efficient workout for beginner lifters and intermediate lifters would require a lot less weight and volume than an efficient workout for experienced lifters. Our goal here is to trigger growth while not giving our bodies excessive stress that would hinder recovery so that we can train again and trigger another wave of growth as soon as possible. The minimum amount of stress needed for experienced lifters to grow is simply higher than that of beginner lifters and intermediate lifters, beginner and even some intermediate lifters often times can recover from an efficient workout for them in as few as 1 to 2 days; experienced lifters on the other hand may need a full week to recover from a workout efficient for them. Thus, beginner trainers can recover faster and have a faster progression rate! The sooner you recover, the sooner you can train and grow again.

Growth Hormone

When doing full body workouts, our bodies produce more growth hormone than doing workouts that only involve a fewer body parts. This is quite self explanatory, as the more muscle you work, the more growth hormone your body produces.

Focus On The Main Lifts

In a lot of programs we see a lot of assistance work such as dumbbell flys for the chest and triceps extensions for the triceps. Why not just do the bench press and work both muscle groups at the same time? First you can save time, and you also get more stimulation from the heavier load you can use. There are generally two reasons for assistance work, the first reason is to add volume to the program without excessive stress to the CNS (Central Nervous System) that would overtax the body which does more harm than good; the second reason is to fine-tune our bodies. For beginners and even some intermediate lifters, the volume needed to trigger growth can be attained only by doing the main lifts without overtaxing the bodies, and there is not anything yet to be effectively fine-tuned. So assistance exercises can be often times very unnecessary before getting into the experienced stage.

Law of Diminishing Marginal Return

The longer we have worked out, the slower we can progress optimally. Being a beginner is a status we should treasure. We should train as long as we can progressing in a beginner's manner as that is the way how we can progress the fastest. There is a really great beginner program, Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe that I recommend. I highly recommend it to anybody that has not tried it even if you have already lifted for a couple of years. You will see your strength skyrocketing and the size will also follow. Find it online and check it out!

If the program does not sound like something for you, I still recommend you doing simple workouts with the following principles until you can progress no longer (adding weights in each session).

1. perform full body workouts
2. perform 1 to a maximum of 2 exercise(s) for each body part in a single workout
3. keep the volume low by only doing 3 - 5 sets of 5 - 8 reps (start by doing 5 sets of 8 reps and gradually drop the volume when you cannot add weight until you are doing 3 sets of 5)
4. only choose compound movements such as bench press, squats, deadlift, military press and pull ups

You will be astonished by your progression! Enjoy the wonder of simplicity!

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Sweet Corn & Chestnut Ris'oat'to

The Sweet Corn & Chestnut Ris'oat'to is a perfectly healthy yet hearty dish for the autumn incorporating two of the best ingredients of this season! Just like any of our signature Ris'oat'tos at Urban Fitness HK, the creamy texture of the dish can be attained without any added oil or butter! Other nutritional benefits of using oats over rice include higher fiber content and lower GI. Prepare this recipe as the perfect side dish for this autumn!

gluten free, low fat, low GI, high fiber, vegan

Serves 3 - 4

150g whole rolled oats
400mL harvest corn soup
250mL water
100g peeled chestnuts (approximately 150g with shells)
1 small purple onion (approximately 150 - 200g)
few cloves of garlic
salt to taste (half a tsp recommended)

1. Bring a pot of water to boil and boil the chestnuts for 5 minutes (depending of the size and type of chestnut you get, the boiling time might have to be increased to up to 10 minutes, the idea is to have the chestnuts cooked to a soft texture that can be mashed)

2. chop the onion, mince the garlic, and peel the chestnuts as shown in the picture below 

3. heat up a non-stick wok at high heat
4. toss in the garlic and half of the onion into the wok, stir occasionally to ensure even heating, and stir-fry until browned
5. pour in the water, then the soup, and toss in the peeled chestnuts, add salt to taste (make sure not to add too much salt as this is a primarily sweet dish and just a little bit of salt can enhance the sweetness from the corn soup as well as the chestnuts)
6. stir to mix the soup evenly, and start mashing the chestnuts in the soup with a spoon to your desired chunkiness, bring the soup back to boil and let it boil for two minutes while mashing the chestnuts, then toss in the oats
7. turn down to low heat, keep stirring occasionally to ensure even cooking and prevent sticking
8. when mixture is half absorbed by oats, toss in the other half of the onion, keep stirring occasionally
9. cook to your desired consistency and enjoy!

Tips:

*Reason why I add the onion in two batch is to add an extra texture to the dish, the function of the first half is to give taste to the soup, and the function of the second half is to add a crunch to the dish

*Remember to add the water before adding the soup or the heat of the wok may burn the soup

*If boiling and peeling the chestnuts is too much work, packaged pre-cooked and peeled chestnuts can also be used to replace raw chestnuts in the recipe, they can normally be found in most supermarkets and convenient stores in Hong Kong

Nutritional Breakdown:

Calories: 850kcal
Protein: 30g
Fat: 10g
Net Carbohydrates: 160g
*net carbs does not include fiber as fiber cannot be digested by human bodies and thus provides no calories for us
Fiber: 20g

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The Truth About Cholesterol

Cholesterol, one of the most evil terms known in today's health and fitness world. A lot of us watch what we eat because of cholesterol. No longer enjoying eggs with yolks, restricting usage of cheese in various recipes, and taking some seafood completely out of our diets. But do most of us really know what cholesterol is and how does it actually affect our bodies?

Is it a true evil or just misunderstood? Today we are going to reveal the true nature of cholesterol and what it does to our bodies.

What is Cholesterol?

Cholesterol, unlike common perception, is not one definite substance. Cholesterol actually combine with proteins in our blood stream becoming different types of lipoproteins.

Low Density Lipoproteins (LDL)

LDL is known as the "bad" cholesterol. It is responsible for all the negative effects cholesterol has on our bodies we have commonly heard of. Not all LDL particles are the same though. LDL particles actually come in different sizes and large LDL particles should not be much of our concern. Only small LDL particles can potentially squeeze through the lining of our arteries, oxidise, and cause damage and inflammation. In short, only the amount of small LDL particles is directly proportional to the risk of heart diseases.

High Density Lipoproteins (HDL)

As oppose to LDL, HDL is known as the "good" cholesterol. It helps our bodies getting rid of LDL and triglycerides. Think of HDL as the cleaner of our arteries.

Very Low Density Lipoproteins (VLDL)

VLDL rarely appears in our body check reports as there is no simple and direct way to measure the level of VLDL yet. It is very similar to LDL that they contain mostly fat and not much protein.

Triglycerides

This is a type of fat carried by VLDL. It is converted from excess calories, alcohol, or sugar in our bodies and can be stored as fat throughout our bodies.

Truth About Cholesterol

Cholesterol is actually very essential to our health as cholesterol makes up important parts of our cells and hormones. Without cholesterol, our bodies would not be able to function. We would not have a body at all without cholesterol as it is a vital component of our cell membranes!

What Really Matters?

Too many people nowadays are over-concerned about their total cholesterol level. The truth is that unless it is way above, I am talking about over 300 here, there is no reason to worry about it. We should also note that different organisations have intentionally lowered the "safety cholesterol level" in favour of drugs marketing.

What we should really be looking at are the HDL to total cholesterol ratio and the triglyceride to HDL ratio. When dividing our HDL by our total cholesterol level, the ideal should be above 24%; and when dividing our triglyceride by our HDL, the ideal should be less than 2. This is what truly matters when monitoring our cardiovascular health.

Dietary Cholesterol and Body Cholesterol

Eating less cholesterol to monitor our cholesterol level, sounds like it makes complete sense, right? Not quite, what actually happens is that in average, 75% of the cholesterol in our bodies are produced with only 25% from our dietary intake. And guess what, because of our bodies' adaptive nature, when we increase our dietary cholesterol intake, our bodies lower its cholesterol production; in contrast, when we decrease our dietary cholesterol intake, our bodies increase its cholesterol production!

There have been very well-designed cholesterol feeding studies done by universities and health organisations where subjects were fed commonly demonised healthy whole foods (such as whole eggs) daily and had their cholesterol levels monitored. In general, around 75% of the subjects did not experience any noticeable cholesterol level difference before or after the experiment. While approximately 25% of the subjects, later labelled as "hyper-responders" did experience an increase in total cholesterol, the ratio of LDL to HDL though (what actually matters as we have explained above), remained the same. In addition to that, their LDL levels increased due to an increase in size of LDL particles instead of an increase in numbers of LDL particles. As previously mentioned, only small LDL particles are potentially harmful to our cardiovascular health. In other words, for this 25% of the subjects, consuming more dietary cholesterol from natural whole foods actually improved their cholesterol levels!

The good news? All those abandoned indulgences such as whole eggs, cheese, and steak can come back to our diets! Feel no guilt from enjoying a whole egg omelette for breakfast or coupling a glass of red wine with a nice piece of steak!

What Should We Be Watching?

If dietary cholesterol is not what we should be looking at, what factors should we be monitoring and how can we better our cholesterol levels?

Weight

Being overweight increases the tendency of having a high LDL level and losing weight automatically helps lowering our LDL while increasing our HDL. So if you are overweight and have to improve your cholesterol level, instead of looking at your dietary cholesterol intake, start looking at your total caloric intake and exercising to lose weight!

Exercise

Not only can exercising benefit overweight individuals to lose weight for improving their cholesterol levels, exercising itself can lower LDL and raise HDL in general for every single person!



Diet

I have just brought justice to those long misunderstood healthy high cholesterol whole foods earlier. On the other hand, there are indeed foods that can worsen our cholesterol. Two no-nos out there that would both directly and indirectly impact our cholesterol towards the dark side are added sugars, and trans-fat. There is one category of food commonly include both of these evil factors, processed foods. It is the best to stay away from processed foods and make up preferably our entire diets with healthy whole foods.

Alcohol 

Excessive alcohol consumption can have serious impact on the health of our livers and heart muscles, which will eventually lead to high blood pressure, and raising triglycerides. Thus, monitor our alcohol consumption to make sure it does not do harm to our cholesterol levels is vital.

Stress

Stress is another factor that can affect our cholesterol levels. In the world of health and fitness, not only regarding our cholesterol levels, stress is a big enemy in general. Make sure to relax ourselves every once in a while especially when working through tough periods in the year. Some common ways of relieving stress includes exercising, and meditating. Find something that suit you the best is the most important part!

Cholesterol is indeed something we should monitor, but we should thoroughly understand what it is and monitor it in the correct way instead of having irrational fear for it! Have no hesitation enjoying your whole egg omelette for breakfast from now on! 

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